By Mary Rubright
Throughout our journey in South Africa, we have observed so many different types of people with different backgrounds. Although the history of the country remains constant, the way people experienced that history varies greatly. With this country’s troubling relationship with equity and democracy, the most common theme I have found with the people I have seen in South Africa so far is the use of coping mechanisms. To me, coping means how people deal with situations and more significantly, the connection between one’s history and how they deal with their future. The people we have talked to portray a positive light on a very negative situation but what if we would have met these people 30 years earlier? What if these people had just been released from jail after serving a sentence based on the color of their skin? Would they still want to wave the South African flag with pride and move forward with their lives in confidence? The people we have met in this last week, are not the same people that they were 30 years earlier and that can largely be due to the coping mechanisms that these people have used to get through the hardships of this country.
When Kurt Eaglehof preformed his bio-drama one man show, “4 Generations” I was moved not just by the story and the performance but more so by the meaning of the performance for the performer. When talking with Kurt after his performance, he was so open in sharing how he reached a point in his life where looked at himself and didn’t like what he saw. He discussed his triggers for self-exploration as being his mother’s death and his recent diagnosis of diabetes. The most powerful message he left me was when he said that “weeping for yourself is the first step in liberation.” His coping was his self-recognition of the problems that he faced and was still carrying the burden of. He allowed himself to be happy and self-love and self-forgive in order to understand what happened to him and the 3 generations of men in his family before him. Taking that burden and weight of the struggles that he and his family faced and turning it into a positive way to express those emotions was an amazing way to make sense of a history and move on to a more enlightened future.
While speaking to James Matthews, I was pleasantly surprised with his honesty when it came to the frustration that he felt in his life. His words proved too powerful for the apartheid government and he was sent to jail and his book of poetry was banned. He even thought about leaving South Africa but could not be granted a passport for to anywhere but Botswana (which he did not want to go too). He continued to discuss that he was so frustrated with everything in his life and writing proved to be his only escape from it. Matthew’s said that he had to find a way to get out of “the cell that he created in his mind” and poetry was how he did that. Matthews is another example of a coping mechanism that was used to make sense and move past the historical turmoil of the country. I was extremely moved by the poems that Matthews wrote and I find it refreshing that someone that has lived through a time of so much hatred had a way to escape from it through poetry. It provides us, as youth, with an important lesson in living authentically and not being afraid to be alone with our minds.
While we have seen the positive coping mechanisms, I find it very essential to make note of the negative mechanisms as well. In our reading and discussion of “A Bed Called Home” by Mamphela Ramphele, we have seen how people in the hostels would drink or smoke as a way to cope with the awful living conditions and lifestyles. Ramphele writes that “it is important to see this as a consequence of a survival strategy which people living under difficult circumstances have had to devise” (64). Although this is a coping situation during the major problems in South Africa, there are lingering effects that impact the next generation and are still prevalent in today’s society. Mistreatment of women was also common in these hostels and is still a problem today. As we listened to the presentation of the Xhosa tribe in class yesterday, we found that this problem of violence and crimes against women is still so common in South Africa.
As we continue to travel throughout this amazing country, I hope to find more people who can share their stories of hope and coping with us. I challenge classmates to also try and look for this common theme and to find peace within their minds like many of the people we have met have done.
